PRO GUEST OF HONOR LUCIUS SHEPARD ART GUEST OF HONOR J.K. POTTE R FAN GUESTS OF HONOR ALEXIS & DOLL GILLILAND May 26-29, 1989 The Washington Science Fiction Association THE COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: Michael J. Walsh THURSDAY/FRIDAY APPOINTEE: Tom Schaad PUBLICATIONS: SOUVENIR BOOK: Daniel J. Steffan ASSISTANT: Stephen P. Brown POCKET PROGRAM: John Pomeranz NAME BADGE: Joe Mayhew THE FATHER OF STONES by LUCIUS SHEPARD: THE WSFA PRESS: Michael J. Walsh, Mary-Rita Blute AT CON ASSISTANCE: Walter Miles REGISTRATION: Kent Bloom ASSISTANT: John Sapienza STAFF: G. Shaner, Patrick Paul CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER: Robert Macintosh DISCAVE: Evan Phillips STAFF: Erica Van Dommelan Covert Beach Keith Marshall Dan Hoey Joe Mayhew Lee Uba Kathleen Morrison PROGRAM DIRECTOR: John Pomeranz GREENROOM TSARS: Mike and Beth Zipser DISCLAVE 1989 ASSISTANT GREENROOM TSAR: Cat Slusser GREENROOM TSARLETTES: Cal Lynn Barry Newton SOUVENIR BOOK Chris Callahan Susan Cohen Candy Gresham Erica Lilly Mel Scharaden Copyright © 1989 by The Washing­ Joe Mayhew Terri Lee Edwards-Hewitt ton Science Fiction Association and Rise Peters Lisa Swope Disclave 1989, All Rights Reserved. Judy Newton Erica Van Dommelen “A Shepard Walkabout” © 1989 by Kim Stanley Robinson, “An Interview ART SHOW DIRECTOR: Steven Fetheroff With Lucius Shepard" © 1987 by ASSISTANT DIRECTORS: Dick Roepke and Tom Schaad Science Fiction Eye, “Lucius Shep­ AUCTIONEERS: Rikk Jacobs, Eric "Dr. Gandalf” Fleischer ard Bibliography” © 1989 by Charles MINIONS: Barry Zeiger Erica Lilly Power, “Further Potterings” © 1989 Covert Beach Wayne Grey by Ramsey Campbell, "Gilliland” © North Lilly Tracy Henry 1989 by Steve Stiles. All artwork © 1989 by J. K. Potter, HUCKSTER ROOM: Scott and Jane Dennis except page 5 © 1987 by Richard Thompson, page 29 © 1989 by Dan CABANA KING: Jack Heneghan Steffan, page 30 © 1989 by Steve FILM PROGRAM: Kathi Overton, Robyn Rissell, Mark Barker Stiles, and pages 31-33 © 1989 BABYSITTING: Mary Morman Alexis Gilliland. OLDER CHILDREN: Eva Whitley For information about WSFA’s year- SATURDAY NIGHT DANCE: Alan Huff round meetings and activities, send DJ: Dave Bischoff a self-addressed, stamped envelope to: DISCLAVE CHAIR 1990: Eva Whitley WSFA, Inc. 4030 South 8th Street Arlington, VA 22204 2 DISCLAVE 1989 WELCOME TO DISCLAVE o make your stay as pleasant as possible we ask that you observe these simple Trules of etiquette: • NO WEAPONS. If you think it might be a weapon, it probably is. Due to numerous com­ plaints last year, boom boxes played excessively loud are now considered weapons. • Please do your sleeping in your room— not in the corridors or the lobby. • Please wear your badge while at the con. It means that you’ve paid your way and lets the hotel know that you are part of the con and not trespassing. DISCLAVE reserves the right to ask anyone to leave for offensive behavior, and to revoke membership. Because the drinking age in Maryland is 21 we have to require proof of age of EVERYONE who registers with the con and wishes to drink alcohol served by DISCLAVE. Disclave will not knowingly serve anyone who appears to be drunk DISCLAVE is one of the few cons on the east coast that still serves alcohol. We ask that you help us with the responsibilities that are part of this service. • Michael Walsh Chairman DISCLAVE 1989 3 PRO GOH SHEPARD WALKABOUT By Kim Stanley Robinson hen I was asked to write an introduction to Lucius Shepard for Disclave’s pro­ gram book it occurred to me immediately that the best way to do this would be to have a dis­ illusioning romantic entanglement and then move toW the coast of some Central American country and hang out drinking, smoking, snorting and otherwise ingesting the local psychotropic substances until one night I would stagger out under the stars and it would All Come Clear To Me in a sudden rush that I would hopefully remember or get down on scraps of paper. Yes, this was obviously the way. Unfortunately I do not desire to have a disillu­ sioning romantic entanglement and I am not cur­ rently able to get to Central America, and as a replacement the waterfront scene in Bethesda Maryland would seem to be lacking in certain essential respects. Also my house’s supply of drugs is down to Advil and espresso and one almost empty bottle of retsina, I know, not very inspiring it’s true, but nevertheless as a writer I know What Has To Be Done, and obviously this pilgrimage Had To Be Made if I wanted to do justice to this introduction. 4 DISCLAVE 1989 So I reconsidered and thought, well, what's so comes in a wide shallow glass rimmed with salt. It’s wrong with Bethesda Maryland, how is it so essen­ a thick 7-11 sour lime Slurpy with an indeter­ tially different from the coast of Honduras? The minate amount of tequila in it, and I who love weather is often similar, there are lots of ethically tequila down it and get back to my point, which is dubious characters walking the streets making their the beauty of Lucius’s landscapes. These are for me livings in ways they don’t want God to hear about; the most wonderful part of his work. How to de­ yes, this is just another tropical swamp with some scribe their effect? Perhaps another margarita will concrete thrown into it. 1 can do my Shepard Safari help. Can't tell if they’re weak or strong. Open up a right here if I just use my imagination a little, the recent story by Lucius, almost anywhere, and there Globe Theater becoming the battlefields of France it is: “I did not choose a direction, but soon 1 found sort of thing, all the world’s a stage exactly. So I myself on the beach, heading toward one of the resolved to take my tnisty notebook in hand and go shanty bars. The night was perfect for my mood. bar-hopping in Bethesda, stopping for a drink or Winded: a constant crunch of surf and palm fronds two in each and taking these notes as I went along. tearing; combers rolling in. their plumed spray as Inhaling bus fumes and bar smoke would mimic the white as flame. A brilliant moon flashed between effects of the bad dope, and I’d be on my way. the fronds, creating shadows from even the smallest The first bar was called O’Brien’s, and it was of projections, and set back from the shore, half­ dark and crowded with Bethesda businessmen hidden in deep shadow among palms and sea grape having lunch, but I sat on a stool and ordered and and cashew trees, were huts with glinting windows quickly drank a bloody mary jammed with lemon and tin roofs. The beach was a ragged, narrow strip pulp and barely broken grains of pepper, and of tawny sand strewn with coconut litter and over­ opened my notebook and got to it. turned cayucos. As I stepped over a cayuco, some­ What do I like about Lucius Shepard’s stories? thing croaked and leaped off into the rank weeds Well, where do I start? I like the landscapes. I know, bordering the beach. My heart stuttered, and I fell I know. I’m missing the point, it’s a habit of mine back against the cayuco. It had only been a frog, and believe me I’m aware that there are larger mat­ but its appearance made me aware of my vulner­ ters here, for instance the powerful political aspect ability.” of Lucius’s work, yes, I too used to wish with all my Yes. “The night was perfect for my mood.” “Its heart that I could kidnap Elliot Abrams and Oliver appearance made me aware of my vulnerability.” North and old Ronnie and all the rest and force Shepard’s landscapes are always psychic landscapes, even' one of them to read “Salvador" and “R & R" and this, it seems to me, is just as it should be. All and Life During Wartime page by excruciating landscapes are states of consciousness, and to use page. I’m convinced that if they had read these them as such in fiction is a powerful magic, one of stories and understood them, our foreign policy in the most powerful. Looking around Flanagan's Irish those years would have changed. Because these are pub the contrast is strong; I can no longer stand strongly political stories, and beautifully so in that the plastic landscape it represents and so 1 take off they do not preach a message but instead witness: into the streets of Bethesda again. As 1 leave I hear this is the way it would be, these stories tell us, a fiftyish executive saying complacently to his sec­ and reading them I feel certain that Lucius has cap­ retary, “Yes, I'm going to have a daughter in a tured that future war—a war that might never couple of months." Our mysteries are disappearing. happen, partly because of the vision of it that he Outside it’s dark for midday, it seems it will rain got onto the page, which from there seeped through soon. Getting tropical, how perfect for this walk­ the culture, one image of our fear. “These are the about. days of lasers in the jungle, lasers in the jungle In this area of Bethesda they are tearing out the somewhere,” yes. old buildings and replacing them with postmodern So that aspect is important, yes, and as I drain skyscrapers. There are giant holes in the earth, my second bloody man' and look around at the holes that could contain huge buildings all by businessmen in their suits that are all shades of themselves but are in fact only the foundations for gray except for one bold black, it seems even more buildings even more massive than that.